Danske Bank to end MobilePay service in Norway

On October 11th Danske Bank A/S said that it would end its MobilePay payment service in Norway, as an increasing number of customers are switching to its rival service, Vipps. The Danish bank said that it was in talks with Vipps, a payment app developed by Norway's DNB ASA on a distribution agreement in the country.

Danske Bank said that MobilePay would continue to offer its services in Finland and Denmark. Both Vipps and MobilePay were launched in Norway in 2015. However, Vipps reportedly gained popularity earlier this year, after 100 local banks took a 48% stake in it. DNB then spun off the mobile payments serrvice into an autonomous joint venture.

The digital payments market in Norway had a transaction value of US$13.2bn this year, according to Statista, a business intelligence portal. Scandinavian nations have seen a surge in digital payments as reliance on cash payment has fallen. The volume of card payments in Sweden has increased tenfold since 2000 and only one in five payments last year were made in cash. Norwegians made 456 electronic transactions per person in 2015.

Danske Bank is Denmark's largest bank. In the first half of 2017, the lender reported a 10% jump in net profit to Dkr10.3bn (US$1.6bn), on the back of higher trading income. For the full year, Danske Bank expects net fee income to rise from a year earlier and net profit to range between Dkr18bn-20bn.